Derrida’s Saussure: On the Limits of the Signifier/Signified Distinction

The concept of the sign. AI image

“For the community of language users, the synchronic aspect (l'aspect synchronique) is the one and only reality”. Course in General Linguistics.

Introduction

In Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, Jacques Derrida argues that “the concept of the sign” has always been governed by a structure of referral: “sign-of, signifier referring to a signified” (Derrida, 1978, p. 281). On this basis, he aligns thinkers as distant as Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and Ferdinand de Saussure within a shared configuration governed by what he calls the metaphysics of presence. The claim concerns more than intellectual history; it posits a structural logic that persists beneath doctrinal variation.

This article questions whether such continuity can be sustained once Saussure’s technical redefinition of the sign is taken seriously. Saussure’s signe is not simply another version of the classical Aristotle’s σημείον and Augustine’s signum. It marks a methodological break. If that is so, then the extension of the signifier/signified distinction beyond the synchronic framework in which it was introduced demands justification.

Saussure’s Terminological Intervention

In the Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure redefines the sign with unusual care. “The linguistic sign (signe) is, then, a two-sided psychological entity,” he writes; its elements “are intimately linked and each triggers the other” (Saussure, 1916/2011, p. 98). The sign is not a relation between a thing and a name, but the unity of a concept and a sound pattern. Any association external to the linguistic system is set aside as irrelevant.

Saussure then confronts a terminological ambiguity. In common usage, “sign” often refers only to the sound pattern. To remove this confusion, he proposes retaining signe for the whole while replacing “concept” and “sound pattern” with signifié and signifiant. These terms, he notes, have the advantage of marking both distinction and belonging: each is separate from the other, yet neither exists outside the unity they compose.

This move is not cosmetic. It prevents the reduction of language to a chain of representations. The signified is not an antecedent entity awaiting designation; it is constituted within a network of differences. “No ideas are established in advance,” Saussure later insists; value arises from opposition within a structured whole (1916/2011, pp. 155–156). The system is primary. Elements drawn from different état de langue do not form a system.

Saussure’s sign is therefore defined precisely by the refusal of the representational arrangement that characterizes earlier accounts. It is differential rather than hierarchical, internal rather than referential.

Representational Models: Aristotle and Augustine

In De Interpretatione, Aristotle describes spoken sounds as symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks as symbols of spoken sounds; those affections are likenesses of things (16a3–8). The architecture is layered and directional. Inscription points to voice, voice to mental states, and mental states to beings. Ontological priority rests at the end of the chain.

Augustine of Hippo develops a comparable orientation. A sign presents itself to the senses while directing the mind toward something other than itself. The sensible element serves as vehicle; intelligibility is destination. The relation presupposes a prior content that the sign mediates.

In both cases, the sign operates within a representational framework. Meaning precedes its expression and anchors it.

Derrida’s Universalization of the Distinction

In Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, Jacques Derrida describes “the concept of the sign” as structured by the difference between signifier and signified. “If one erases the radical difference between signifier and signified,” he argues, “it is the word ‘signifier’ itself which would have to be abandoned as a metaphysical concept” (Derrida, 1978, p. 281). The opposition appears as a constant articulation governing Western thought.

Notably, Derrida employs the terms signifier and signified without naming Saussure, even though these expressions were introduced within the framework of his General Linguistics. The use of signifier and signified as descriptors of Aristotle’s σημείον and Augustine’s signum suggests that the distinction names a structural logic operative across centuries. The signifier/signified pair functions as a universal operator.

The question is whether this extension preserves the structural conditions under which the terms were coined. In Saussure, signifier and signified are inseparable aspects of a single differential entity. They do not designate ontologically distinct strata arranged in a chain of mediation. In Aristotle and Augustine, by contrast, the relation is explicitly hierarchical and referential. To redescribe both configurations through the same vocabulary risks neutralizing their systemic divergence.

One might argue that Derrida is concerned only with the persistence of difference, not with representational grounding. Yet Saussure’s distinction is meaningful only within a closed system where value is relational and no term possesses independent substance. Once abstracted from that context and applied to metaphysical hierarchies, it acquires a different function.

Structural Delimitation and Genealogical Reach

In Course in General Linguistics we read: “For the community of language users, the synchronic aspect ( l'aspect synchronique) is the one and only reality”. Saussure insists that elements from distinct synchronic states do not form a system, conceptual value is inseparable from internal structure. If this methodological constraint is taken seriously, the portability of signifier/signified beyond its état de langue becomes questionable. The distinction cannot automatically serve as a key to ancient semiotics.

Derrida’s genealogy depends on the abstraction of that distinction from its original theoretical boundaries. By treating it as expressive of a persistent logic of referral, he extends its scope beyond thetheoretical field in which it was defined. The move is philosophically ambitious, but it presupposes the very invariance that Saussure’s synchronic method suspends, there is no “concept” that preserves its identity independently of the system that sustains it.

The issue is not terminological purity. It concerns methodological coherence. A system-bound clarification becomes, in Derrida’s account, a general schema for interpreting the Western tradition. The transformation from technical distinction to universal category requires argument, not assumption.

Conclusion

Saussure’s reformulation of the sign marks a departure from representational hierarchy. His signe is a differential unity, internally constituted within a synchronic network. Aristotle’s σημείον and Augustine’s signum, by contrast, belong to structures grounded in ontological precedence. To treat all three through the same signifier/signified articulation is to privilege formal differentiation over systemic organization.

Derrida’s reading gains force from its breadth. Yet its breadth rests on the universalization of a distinction whose original formulation was methodologically delimited. If Saussure’s principles are followed, the signifier/signified pair cannot function as a timeless operator without further justification. The genealogy of the sign thus encounters a limit: the structural rupture introduced in modern linguistics resists absorption into a single conceptual schema. Whether that resistance can be overcome remains an open question, but it cannot be ignored.

References

Aristotle. (2002). Categories and De Interpretatione (J. L. Ackrill, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published ca. 4th century BCE)

Daylight, Russell. What if Derrida was wrong about Saussure? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Derrida, J. (1978). Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In Writing and Difference (A. Bass, Trans., pp. 278–293). University of Chicago Press. (Original work presented 1966)

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

 Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in General Linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916)